| I would say war has become more precise than ever before and technology has a huge part to play in this. It is still just as deadly.
You can look at WWII, Korea and Vietnam with the same viewpoint because the technology was still quite primitive. Land navigation was still map and compass, radios were unsecure, bombs were all dumb, carpet bombing was a common practice, night vision was limited, bombing of cities was not frowned upon like it is today...you get the point.
Now we can take out a anti tank gun inside a residential area with little damage to the surrounding buildings. I saw more than one example of this in Iraq. We are no longer using big arse bombs to take out targets. We are using enough force to kill the military target without blasting everything esle within a 300 meter radius.
As the US goes, we also have light casualties because of 3 main reasons in Iraq. We own the sky, we have neutralized most enemy indirect fire and most of Iraq has been low intensity combat. A hit and run attack with mortars is nothing like the hours long artillery bombardments of WWII and Korea. If we engaged in combat where we did not own the skies and the enemy artillery was effective, we would see the mass casualties roll in. Remember, Artillery is still the King of Battle.
Today's war machine is still just as deadly. We just have not seen two big armies of equal quality and quantity go at it. The day is coming though
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"The best form of taking care of troops is first-class training, for this saves unnecessary casualties." Erwin Rommel
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